Harry’s features shifted to neutral as he looked down his shoulder at me. “Cockroaches always find a way.”
Just then, a graying, paunchy man—the fire chief—climbed on top of a car hood, raised a bullhorn, and shouted, “Everybody home! The building is not structurally sound.” He continued yelling for us to disperse, until the objections drowned the bullhorn out. Putting up a fight didn’t work because firefighters emptied out of the slaughterhouse and herded us to our cars.
“We’ve just witnessed the end of an empire, friends,” Graham spoke from the corner of his mouth. There was a volley of shouts about moving the party to the beach or to Amanda’s house. None of those invitations were extended to us.
We were in the car bumper-to-bumper with our classmates for several minutes before Viv spoke. “I’ve been looking forward to Slumber Fest my whole life,” she said, the back of her hand placed morosely on her forehead.
Graham pushed his glasses up his nose. “You won’t even eat beef. Sleeping in a slaughterhouse would have been hypocritical.”
Her hair whipped back and forth and her glowing polish made comet tails in the dark. “Seniors bragged about it every fall. A couple years ago everyone played spin the bottle.”
“Then we probably would have caught mono,” Harry deadpanned. “Sleeping in a slaughterhouse doesn’t beat eating pizza from Lunardi’s and swimming.”
Viv emitted a high-pitched noise of disbelief.
“I only wanted to do it because it reminded me of the adventures we used to have,” I admitted. I gazed out the window.
My thought process went like this: sleeping in the slaughterhouse would have been a coup; it was unoriginal, though. This was the last year we’d spend in Seven Hills; we couldn’t waste it on stale adventures; the fire chief saved us from a brief and stupid exploit.
I was struggling to make the final leap. I hugged my knees and relaxed while listening to the others talk. Their voices braided and became one long, golden note that felt comforting in my ears. It reminded me of Viv’s fingertips, like butterfly wings on my skin as she did my eye makeup, and Graham jumping off the end of the diving board with me on his back, and Harry smuggling king-size candy bars into the movie theater.
The end of our lives together was racing toward us. Graduation stood on my chest. If I didn’t do something, we would blow into one another’s pasts, and these three brilliant, dazzling friends would be lost to me.
5
Is she happy?” Viv asked. We shared the barn’s blush-colored sofa, her legs on my lap. The tart, fermented cider had its fangs in my tongue. It washed away the taste of the deep-dish pizza we had devoured after the slaughterhouse.
The barn was as hot as the car had been, the baby hairs framing Viv’s face curling with humidity. Graham paced, sending eddies through the air, his steps resonating up into the eaves of the loft where we stored our sleeping bags and camping tent. We almost always thought we didn’t need the tent until the mornings we woke bitten by bugs. Viv, her forehead misshapen with lumps, would cross her heart with a manicured nail and swear never to go again. But she’d braved the mosquitoes for me four times that past summer.
“Who cares if she’s happy?” Graham said with an abrupt turn. “She’s my mother. This is my fifth stepfather. She leaves for two months and this is what she brings me?” He beat the air with a wooden figurine. “It’s a doll.”
Viv smothered a giggle in her palm.
“C’mon, man. Maybe the guy’s decent?” Harry said.
Graham threw himself into a chair, its legs shrieking against the distressed white floorboards. Harry settled with his back against the sofa. He smelled metallic with sweat. Everything smelled of sweating skin. My limbs were noodles. I wanted to swim.
Graham drew my attention with a dragged-out sigh. “Actually,” he said, knocking a fist on the souvenir, “it’s not a doll.” Thoughtfulness crept onto his face “It’s an idol, one of worship. She used to send such interesting stuff, though. Unusual, exotic, grisly artifacts. Oh.” His eyebrows leaped up. “Remember the flesh-eating beetle colony from East Borneo? Used to pick skeletons clean?”
Viv shuddered and combed her fingers through the tangles in her hair. “I remember that dead mouse you and Harry tried to use them on.” She gave him a reproachful look. “Grotesque. Anyway, you’re just pissy your mom didn’t bring you along to China or Japan or wherever. Poor Teddy Graham, didn’t get another stamp in his passport.”
Graham looked up, surprised, and then smiled showing his teeth, eyes twinkling at being pegged. He was four and stealing cookies again. “Sure, I wish she’d brought me to Myanmar or that I’d at least met the old dude before she married him. He teaches at NYU. He won’t even show his face until Thanksgiving.”
“Then nothing’s changed,” I said. My eyes stuck to the idol. It was carved from pale yellow wood, smooth and glossy. Graham had stomped into the barn when he and Harry arrived to pick us up for the slaughterhouse, tossed the figurine on the couch, and barked, “Don’t ask.” But it was all he went on about after we returned. “Where’d she find it?” I wondered.
Graham jumped up and knelt on the faded Turkish rug, instantly cheerier that there was a story to be told. He propped the doll so it was standing on my knees. The idol was featherlight. Harry twisted for a look and Viv sat, one pointy shoulder poking out of the netting of her swimsuit cover-up. We huddled around the idol like it was special, as though deep down we knew that stupid, nothing doll was a spark to our kindling. I brushed a finger along the lines of its crescent moon and the curve of its robe. A woman. Indeterminable age. Hawkish features. A charge ran into my fingertip when I touched her cheek and I snatched my hand back.
“My mother found it in the market of a village where she was doing research.” Graham’s mom studied near-extinct cultures all over the world. “The village is on the Irrawaddy Delta. She’s the idol of a cult that worships her. An ancient cult. They make tea from a special plant they find in the jungle to have ritual visions.”
“To get high?” Viv asked.
Graham’s dimples deepened. “More of an altered state of consciousness to communicate with her.” He thumbed the idol’s head. “They make blood sacrifices, too.”
Graham’s whirling thoughts showed through his gunmetal eyes, like waves through a spyglass. I smiled. “Is any of that not bullshit?”
He smirked. “Could be. It’s stuff I’ve read. All I know for sure is that my mom found her at a market and she has no idea where the idol originated from.”
Viv stuck her tongue out at Graham. I didn’t mind that he loved to slip lies in with the truth. The opposite. I was good at spotting them. I loved his stories. “She’s a mystery,” I said.